The 20 Most Instagrammed Dishes in Chicago

MOST INSTAGRAMMED

Ryan Joseph

Deadspin journalist Drew Magary hit the nail on the head when he described the Windy City in a recent podcast: Chicago has all of the amenities of a cosmopolitan city like New York, but it’s way cheaper—especially when it comes to the grub.

“Chicago’s food scene is approachable,” says Time Out Chicago‘s dining editor Amy Cavanaugh. “The majority of great restaurants don’t ask a lot of the diner. We don’t like waits, and we don’t like spending a fortune on dinner.”

While it’s true that Grant Achatz’s mini restaurant empire has cemented the city’s reputation as a powerhouse dining center, it is the neighborhood joints like Harold’s Chicken Shack and the now-shuttered Hot Doug’s that run this Midwestern town.

“For the most part, going out to dinner is a pretty casual experience,” says Cavanaugh.

With all of these qualifications in mind, we wanted to know which dishes within the city’s limits were the most popular on Instagram—and whether the list would consist entirely of tourist destinations and kitschy steakhouses like Ditka’s (because if there’s anything Chicago loves more than food, it’s sports), or be dominated by trendy restaurants on the city’s North Side.

To get some answers, we again teamed up with MyFab5 to attempt a bit of semi-scientific analysis and uncover the 20 most-Instagrammed dishes in Chicago, just as we did to determine NYC’s and L.A.’s favorites. Here’s the breakdown:

Methodology

We used data provided by MyFab5 to find out which restaurants had the most food-related Instagrams over the 365 days.

We found the restaurant’s geotag for its most well-known Chicago location, then looked at the photos to see which dish drives the most ‘grams (sample size: ~100). In most cases, the star of the show was pretty obvious.

We ranked each dish’s popularity based upon MyFab5’s ranking of the restaurant where it’s served.

Maple Bacon Long John at Glazed & Infused

Glazed & Infused is one of two Chi-Town doughnut shops to feature on the list. It also continues to showcase that most new-age fried dough purveyors skew towards sensational gluttony bombs over O.G. crullers.

New Haven-Style Pizza at Piece Brewery and Pizzeria

A photo posted by Spencer (@sanzphotos) on Mar 25, 2015 at 12:30pm PDT

Media via

Here again is another ranked pizza parlor whose style isn’t native to Chicago. However, this Wicker Park shop appears to make solid, delicious New Haven pies, which includes this special-edition “Atomic Pizza” made in collaboration with Hot Doug’s Doug Sohn.

Some Combination of Pepperoni, Sausage, and Mushrooms Deep-Dish Pizza at Pequod’s

Pequod’s is the first deep-dish spot to appear on the list. It also presents the problem of identifying exactly which deep-dish pizza people are snapping on their phones because of a) the sauce and b) the fact that almost all pies are infinitely customizable. Pequod’s customers appeared to enjoy some combo of pepperoni, sausage, and mushrooms on their slices.

Like the NYC and L.A. lists, Heritage Bicycles General Store is the chic, multi-purposeful coffee shop in a relatively hip part of town. And its lavender lattes look like the drink item that brings customers in.

Tacos de Pescado at Big Star

Pull up to the Wicker Park taco joint on a gorgeous weekend evening in the summer and watch a restaurant literally come alive. The bar’s packed, the tables outside are stuffed full, and everyone’s boozing on craft beer while downing some of the best tacos in the city. Big Star’s Tacos de Pescado are what customers are snapping up most often.

And now for some analysis…

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Just by judging what made the top-20, Chicago’s a town that definitely enjoys unfussy comfort foods—burgers, pizza, and ramen, among other things. Unlike NYC and L.A., the appearances on this list match up more accurately with Chicago’s tastes (remember, pizza didn’t even crack New York’s list). Yet, the number of deep-dish places here indicates that tourists might be skewing the results.

“Chicago is a pizza town, definitely, but the idea that we all eat deep dish all the time is a myth,” Cavanaugh says. “Yeah, I really like Pequod’s, but deep-dish is not an everyday pizza. It’s drunk pizza, hangover pizza, visitors-are-in-town pizza. I’d argue our best pizzas are actually thin crust, like Piece, Coalfire and Spacca Napoli, all of which offer different styles.”

Cavanaugh also points out that one of Chicago’s burgeoning food trends didn’t even chart when it should have.

“If I’m surprised by anything, it’s that there are no tiki cocktails here,” she says. “Chicago is tiki obsessed right now, thanks to Lost Lake and Three Dots and a Dash, and those drinks (and bars) are gorgeous.”

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